Are hardware vendors starting to bail on FreeBSD ... ?

[User Freebsd]

On Wed, 26 Jul 2006, Darrin Chandler wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 03:36:51PM -0300, User Freebsd wrote:
>> On Wed, 26 Jul 2006, Nikolas Britton wrote:
>>
>>> * No binary blob drivers.
>>
>> This is one that I don't necessarily agree with ... if Adaptec came out
>> with a *supported* iir driver, but it was binary only, I'd be happy with
>> that ... I just want to know that if I *have* a problem with a piece of
>> hardware, that I can get support for it ...
>
> A lot of people agree with you, but I'm not one of them. It's not about
> you being inconvenienced in this particular case. It's about choice, and
> vendors supporting the customers by providing *specs*.
>
> What if they provide a blob for FreeBSD but you decide you want to run
> NetBSD on a particular machine and there's no blob? Or much more likely:
> what if they provide a blob for Linux, but not for FreeBSD? Should they
> also provide a blob for Plan 9?
>
> If the specs are not open, then your choices are limited to what the
> vendor wants to develop and support. And that's likely to be Windows,
> and maybe Linux, and maybe maybe FreeBSD.
>
> OTOH, if the vendor opens the specs then good, solid drivers can be
> written for whatever platform. And ported. And if there's a problem it
> can be fixed. This even turns out to benefit people who don't give a
> hoot about whether something is "free" or "open" or not.

My point isn't that I *liked* binary-only drivers ... my point is that I'd 
rather a company like Adaptec to *at least* supply a binary driver if they 
require their specs to be closed, then provide *no means* for me to use 
Adaptec products ...

Right now, I personally am being hurt more by having *nothing* from 
Adaptec, binary or open, then I would be if they'd provide something 
binary, since under 4.x, the Adaptec driver *was* rock solid, so I felt 
pretty safe upgrading to 6.x, which turns out was not so smart a move ...

How many out there are *still* running 4.x on their servers and desktops, 
for similar fears?

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
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